Running the world has become an occupational health and safety issue. Via The New Yorker, Robin Wright sums up the present situation: How Much Is the Coronavirus Infecting World Leaders and Disrupting Governments? Excerpt:
In 1918, the Spanish-influenza pandemic—spawned by another zoonotic virus transmitted from an animal to humans, in that case a bird—worked its way through Woodrow Wilson’s White House. His daughter Margaret caught it. So did the President’s secretary, senior staff, members of his Secret Service detail, and the White House sheep. “Two sheep belonging to the aristocratic flock that frolics on the White House grounds are indisposed and under the care of an expert of the department of Agriculture,” the Washington Post reported, on January 27, 1919. “They are in an animal hospital and are said to have influenza symptoms.”
The flu caught up with Wilson in April, 1919, when he was in Paris for peace talks to formally end the First World War. His fever rose to a hundred and three degrees; he had difficulty breathing, uncontrollable coughing, and wild hallucinations.
Wilson’s illness, his physician Cary Grayson wrote, “was one of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious.” Wilson, his daughter, his staffers, and the White House sheep all made it through.
The peace talks to end the Great War nearly unravelled. As did life in Washington, which reported almost thirty-four thousand cases in just four months, between October, 1918, and January, 1919. Almost three thousand died. Schools, churches, libraries, playgrounds, the courts, universities, theatres, and public events across the nation’s capital were closed. Funerals were banned. Businesses were ordered to operate on a staggered schedule. By the time the influenza ebbed, the death toll in the United States was six hundred and seventy-five thousand. [About the toll of combat casualties in the US Civil War--CK]
A century later, microbes from the novel coronavirus are again not discriminating on the basis of power or politics. The White House announced on Saturday that President Trump’s test for the coronavirus was negative. Yet, from Brasília to Paris, Tehran to Ulaanbaatar, government officials on six continents—cabinet ministers, lawmakers, military leaders, senior policymakers, and health officials—have been infected with numbing speed by the virus. Dozens have gone into quarantine.
“It’s reasonable to expect disruptions in public services and government that we haven’t even envisioned yet,” Lindsay Wiley, a public-health-law and ethics expert at American University, told me.
In Italy, which has the highest number of cases after China, Nicola Zingaretti, head of the Democratic Party and a co-partner in the coalition government, announced on Twitter that he was infected. On Tuesday, the medical chief of the Italian province of Varese, Roberto Stella, died of covid-19.
The President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, opted to self-quarantine after he returned from Italy. In France, President Emmanuel Macron cut back face-to-face meetings after his Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, fell ill with the disease; five French members of parliament have also been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
In Spain, the lower house of parliament suspended all activities on Tuesday when Javier Ortega Smith, the secretary-general of the far-right Vox Party, tested positive; he had attended a party rally in Madrid with many fellow-legislators. Photographs captured Ortega greeting dozens of supporters with handshakes, hugs, and kisses. Vox apologized and mandated that its fifty-three members of parliament self-quarantine for two weeks.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opted to self-quarantine—and telework—after his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, tested positive for covid-19, on Wednesday, after returning from London. The British junior health minister, Nadine Dorries, tested positive shortly after she met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Her office posted a sign on the door: “COVID-19 DO NOT ENTER.” On Twitter, she described the illness as “pretty rubbish.”
In Poland, General Jarosław Mika went into isolation on Tuesday, after he came down with the coronavirus. He had just returned from a military conference in Germany, which the Pentagon subsequently said was also attended by Lieutenant General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, and several staff members.
In Iran, one of the four early hot spots, two vice-presidents, three cabinet officials, nine per cent of the members of parliament, the director of emergency medical services, the chief of the crisis-management organization, senior Revolutionary Guard officers, and prominent clerics are on a long list of officials infected. Ali Akbar Velayati, a doctor trained at Johns Hopkins University and a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went into quarantine on Thursday. Another senior adviser died the previous week. Velayati, who served as the Foreign Minister for sixteen years, was infected while working with medical staff on ways to contain the disease.
It goes on.
